Thursday, January 16, 2014

Global
piracy at sea fell to the lowest level in six years in 2013, largely
because of an international crackdown on pirate gangs that once operated
with impunity off the coast of Somalia, a maritime monitoring
organization reported on Wednesday.

The organization, the International Maritime Bureau, based in London, said in its annual global piracy report
that 264 attacks were recorded worldwide in 2013, compared with 297 in
2012 and 439 in 2011. It was the lowest figure since 270 attacks were
recorded in 2007.

Fifteen acts of piracy were reported off Somalia in 2013, down from 75 in 2012 and 237 in 2011, when Somali piracy peaked.

“The
single biggest reason for the drop in worldwide piracy is the decrease
in Somali piracy off the coast of East Africa,” Pottengal Mukundan, the
director of the International Maritime Bureau, said in a statement.

He
attributed the drop in Somali piracy to greater deterrence by
international naval vessels deployed near Somalia; toughened security
measures aboard many formerly vulnerable vessels, including the use of
private armed guards; and a relative improvement in the political
stability of Somalia, a country torn by years of dysfunction, anarchy
and jihadist militancy.

Piracy
off West Africa, however, which has been increasing in recent years,
showed no sign of easing, mostly because of a surge in Nigerian pirate
gangs.

They accounted for 31 of that region’s 51 reported attacks, many
of them targeting vessels serving Nigeria’s oil industry.

The report
said Nigerian pirates also ventured farther from home, attacking vessels
off the coasts of Gabon, Ivory Coast and Togo.

A report last June
by the International Maritime Bureau and two other piracy monitoring
groups, Oceans Beyond Piracy and the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian
Response Program, said that in 2012 the number of ships and sailors
attacked by pirates off West Africa exceeded those attacked off Somalia
for the first time.